Model

A model is a representation of a system in the real world. Models help us to understand systems and
their properties.

Dalton's model of the atom

John Dalton proposed that all matter is composed of very small things which he called atoms. This was
not a completely new concept as the ancient Greeks (notably Democritus) had proposed that all matter
is composed of small, indivisible (cannot be divided) objects. When Dalton proposed his model
electrons and the nucleus were unknown.

Thomson's model of the atom

After the electron was discovered by J.J. Thomson in 1897, people realized that atoms were made up of
even smaller particles than they had previously thought. However, the atomic nucleus had not been
discovered yet and so the “plum pudding model” was put forward in 1904. In this model, the atom is
made up of negative electrons that float in a “soup” of positive charge, much like plums in a pudding or
raisins in a fruit cake (Figure 4.3). In 1906, Thomson was awarded the Nobel Prize for his work in this
field. However, even with the Plum Pudding Model, there was still no understanding of how these
electrons in the atom were arranged.The discovery of radiation was the next step along the path to
building an accurate picture of atomic structure. In the early twentieth century, Marie and Pierre Curie,
discovered that some elements (the radioactive elements) emit particles, which are able to pass through
matter in a similar way to X–rays (read more about this in Grade 11). It was Ernest Rutherford who, in
1911, used this discovery to revise the model of the atom.
DID YOU KNOW...

Two other models proposed for the atom were the cubic model and the Saturnian model. In the cubic model, the
electrons were imagined to lie at the corners of a cube. In the Saturnian model, the electrons were imagined to
orbit a very big, heavy nucleus.

Rutherford's model of the atom

Rutherford carried out some experiments which led to a change in ideas around the atom. His new
model described the atom as a tiny, dense, positively charged core called a nucleus surrounded by
lighter, negatively charged electrons. Another way of thinking about this model was that the atom was
seen to be like a mini solar system where the electrons orbit the nucleus like planets orbiting around the
sun. A simplified picture of this is shown alongside. This model is sometimes known as the planetary
model of the atom.
Bohr's model of the atom
There were, however, some problems with Rutherford's model: for example it could not explain the
very interesting observation that atoms only emit light at certain wavelengths or frequencies. Niels
Bohr solved this problem by proposing that the electrons could only orbit the nucleus in certain special
orbits at different energy levels around the nucleus.

The Quantum Mechanical Model

The discovery that began quantum mechanics as a field of study was when physicists
Albert Einstein and Max Planck proved that light and matter can behave both as particles
and waves. This began the era of quantum mechanics, which is basically the physics of
the very tiny. If particles like electrons can behave as waves, it means that they don't have
an exact position the way we would imagine for a traditional particle. Quantum mechanics
tells us that you can't precisely know both the position and velocity of an electron at the
same time.
This means that we shouldn't imagine electrons as single objects going around the atom.
Instead, all we know is the probability of finding an electron at a particular location. What
we end up with is something called an electron cloud. An electron cloud is an area of
space in which an electron is likely to be found. It's like a 3-D graph showing the probability
of finding the electron at each location in space.
Quantum mechanics also tells us that a particle has certain numbers (called quantum
numbers) that represent its properties. Just like how materials can be hard or soft, shiny or
dull, particles have numbers to describe the properties. These include a particle's orbital
quantum numbers, magnetic quantum number, and its spin. No two electrons in an atom
can have exactly the same quantum numbers.Orbital quantum numbers tell you what
energy level the electron is in. In the Bohr model, this represents how high the orbit is
above the nucleus; higher orbits have more energy. The first orbit is n=1, the second is n=2,
and so on. The magnetic quantum number is just a number that represents which
direction the electron is pointing. The other important quantum mechanical property,
called spin, is related to the fact that electrons come in pairs. In each pair, one electron
spins one way (with a spin of one half), and the other electron spins the other way (with a
spin of negative one half)